It's old news to you by now, but The Escapists's own handsome-British-born-celebrity-game-reviewer-of-the-intertubes-who-isn't-Jim-Sterling, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw took my favorite current-gen SEGA game to task. How will I defend my beloved pile of code against the foul predations of a writer/videomaker with a sense of humor?! My answer below the embed:



I won't.

Dun-dun-DUUUUHN!

Sure, I and my fellow fanboys have promoted the hell out the game, and I'd like to think that it's our fanning that slow burn that helped bring Valkyria Chronicles to his attention in the first place.

Also, it's bad form to "review" someone else's review. Instead, I'm going to use it as a segue into my own complaints about the game, and why in spite of them I think it's still one of the best things to happen since thumbs.

In fact, I share many of Yahtzee's misgivings about the game, mechanically speaking. Most of its biggest issues stem from the imperfect meld between real-time excitement and turn-based precision. To date nearly all the games that have attempted this most difficult of fusions have suffered to some extent or another, the lack of ability to deliver as much on both fronts as a dedicated game of either genre, from Fallout 3 to Star Wars: Empire at War. It might seem like an unfair thing to expect, but if you try big, you sure as hell can fail big.

If you're reading this you already know most of what I'm talking about. The cumbersome (if cute) book mode interface, the odd cover rules, the inexact aiming, and of course the grading system's anathema philosophy, it tends to encourage a quicksave-quickload behavior that detracts from the game over all. It's quite the good thing that the story is engaging and the looks gorgeous.

All things considered though, I do believe the reasons for my wholehearted promotion of the game are sound. In my estimation it manages that naturally awkward straddle quite well, and looks great doing it.

It doesn't make pigs fly, but it does give them wings:



Also, Christ in heaven, don't even try reading the comment thread. On any ZP post, for that matter. I should have f*cking known better. :